Rox Laird

Feb. 15, 2010 10:07 AM

Rox Laird

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Position: Editorial writer

Background: Beats include government, law and courts, First Amendment, architecture and historic preservation.

Laird began his career at the afternoon Des Moines Tribune in 1972, covering nearly every assignment on the paper. Most of his work involved covering government in Des Moines and the suburbs. After the Tribune closed, he moved to the Register and joined the editorial-writers department. Since then, he has written editorials and served several tours of duty as editor of the letters to the editor. Laird is a native of Kearney, Neb., and earned a bacheloršs degree in journalism at Iowa State University.

Laird and his wife, Teresa Ann Laird, live in the Beaverdale neighborhood of Des Moines. They have one grown son, and a son and a daughter who are in college.

I consider myself a native Iowan, having lived in Council Bluffs, Ames and Des Moines for 37 years. I grew up on the Nebraska prairie, however, in a town of 15,000 with a classic American Main Street lined with Victorian-era storefronts, a former state teachers' college at one end of town and an abandoned World War II air base at the other. The Union Pacific Railroad tracks ran squarely down the middle, and the passing yellow passenger trains fueled my imagination.

I enjoyed what might be considered a Norman Rockwell boyhood, with days spent rambling about town on my Schwinn and a mixed-breed cocker spaniel in tow. I was busy with 4-H, Boy Scouts, roller-skating and tinkering with my'54 Chevy in the driveway. As I look back on the experiences of growing up in those quiet years of the 1950s and '60s, I realize that I was very fortunate, indeed.

After high school, I moved to Iowa with my parents and entered college with visions of being an architect. After hanging around student newspapers, however, I became infected with a desire to write for a living, and I switched majors. I have never regretted the decision.

Upon graduation, Uncle Sam called. I spent a few months in the Army, preparing for who knows what, when an old foot injury flared up, and I was given a medical discharge. I landed a job at the late, great Des Moines Tribune - the afternoon sister paper to the Register - where I spent 10 years as a reporter. After the Tribune was closed, I move to the Register, eventually joining the editorial-page staff, where I have been since.

I am married to Teresa Ann Laird, who teaches kindergarten, and we have three children and one grandchild. All three of our children are adopted - our two boys were adopted at birth in Iowa, and our daughter, whom we adopted at the age of 10 months, was born in India. When I'm not working at the trade I still love as passionately as ever, my happiest moments are spent with my family, or reading biographies, history and anything written by or about Mark Twain.